Personal experience says Crawford County teams can make a run this year

The OHSAA Basketball State Tournament, to me, is the most exciting sporting event of the year. Well, it may be second to NCAA March Madness, but that is just one man’s opinion.

The thing I enjoy the most is the unpredictability of it all. And I may only enjoy it because it was something I lived through during my glory days of playing high school basketball. Now, I am not one to usually talk about my days as a high school basketball player because I have grown to be annoyed by those kinds of people, but for a second, I am going to turn into one of those guys I despise.

I promise I will return to my normal cool (I wish) self a few paragraphs down.

As I said before, I have seen some of the most unpredictable tournament runs firsthand. I was a part of the first-ever district championship team at Plymouth. I also was a part of, in my opinion, the most underachieving team and maybe the most overachieving as well. It's easy to say my career was a roller-coaster ride.

As a sophomore, way back in 2006, I was a scared no name playing in his first varsity tournament game at Lexington High School. We finished the regular season 15-5 and earned a first-round bye in the Division IV sectional tournament. Our first opponent was Crestline.

We had six seniors, a few juniors and one lonely sophomore: me. No one had any experience winning a sectional title. My brother, Jarrod, was a senior on that team, and in the previous three years, his team was knocked out in the sectional finals.

We handled Crestline 61-41 to take the sectional crown, our first since the 2001-02 district runner up season. I didn’t score a single point and do not recall taking a single shot. On to Fremont St. Joe's in the district semifinals. Growing up in the Firelands Conference, we feared any school with saint in the name as we watched Norwalk St. Paul dominate in football.

One of our juniors, Eric Cook, served up a masterful game, draining six 3-pointers on his way to scoring almost half of our points in a 42-36 win; he burned them for 20. Again, I had zero points and do not recall taking a shot.

Next up was Sandusky St. Mary’s. We had no business being in the game; we had never been there before. St. Mary’s was a shoo-in to win. I may have caught them off guard, or they just didn’t know who I was since I didn't take a shot in the previous two games, but I had a breakout moment.

My first shot of the tournament was an elbow jumper than slammed off the backboard, almost cracking it. It never touched the rim. While that was not my breakout moment, it was the time I got yanked from a game faster than I went in. My coach, the legendary Brad Turson, pulled me and just said: “Calm down.”

I went on to score 13 points, and we won the game 60-53 for the Plymouth’s first district title. My performance earned me a postgame interview with sports writer Rob McCurdy. That also was the moment I decided I wanted to be a sports writer, so if this is boring you, blame him.

The tournament run was unpredictable, and I was hooked. We were riding high and had a matchup with South Webster awaiting us at the Columbus Fairgrounds Coliseum. South Webster fielded two Division I college players in Nick Aldridge and Brigham Waginger. We got stomped in the Cow Palace mud, 82-37, and our magical run came to a screeching halt. South Webster went on to win the state championship 83-65 over Columbus Grove.

The next season was thought to be a rebuilding year. We had four returning lettermen and a special player in incoming freshman Brook Turson. We put together a 15-5 regular season record, earning an FC Championship and a first-round bye in the sectional tournament despite losing to Buckeye Central and Lucas early in the season.

Coincidentally, our first round game was against Lucas. Although we had just won the sectional title the year before, none of the returning lettermen played a major role. We were thrown into leading roles when those six seniors departed. It showed we were not ready to win because we ended up being “upset," if you can really call it that, by Lucas 59-56 and our season was over before we knew what hit us.

We returned the following year the same team, just a year older. And what a difference a year makes. We broke the school record for wins in a season with 20, 17 in the regular season. We were still a young team. I was the only senior starter with two juniors and two sophomores, and we still didn’t know how to win in the tournament.

We again earned a first-round bye and played Buckeye Central in our first game, which scared me because I knew how good player Blaine Erwin and coach Phil Loy were. We won 57-44, but it felt like a 1-point win.

Our district semifinal matchup was against St. Paul, which had beaten us less than 20 days earlier. It was after that game that I truly believed we could win another district championship. We avenged our loss beating the Flyers 72-45. And Sandusky St. Mary’s was waiting for us in the district finals again.

The team we had beaten for our first district title would be the team I would face if I wanted to win my last. We walked away with a 63-43 victory and the second district title in Plymouth history. My young pups had learned how to win.

We bowed out of the tournament in the regional semifinals, losing to Van Buren at Bowling Green State University 68-52, but we earned another district crown when the team was a year away from being something special. That proved in the tournament — you know the drill — anything can happen.

Maybe it was more than a few paragraphs where I would stop blabbering about the glory days, but as teams are entering tournament play, they should realize that during the hunt for March, anything can happen.

Bucyrus is looking for the elusive first sectional title in school history. While the team's matchup with top-seeded Edison is not favorable, the Redmen will do their best to make things difficult for the Chargers.

The Wynford Royals have the senior leadership to make that big run. They remind me a lot of the team I was on during my sophomore year: carrying six seniors and playing unselfish basketball.

The Bucks have two of the most dynamic players in the area in Grant Loy and Jacob Shade. They have the athleticism and coaching to take them deep in the tournament.

The Colonel Crawford Eagles have a favorable trail playing the winner of South Central and Plymouth. The Eagles have the athleticism and coaching to make for a fun tournament run for North Robinson.

But there is one thing that Crawford County teams need to know when it comes to tournament time ... you guessed it ... anything can happen.